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When Terry L. Smith Jr. dropped Shirley Koval off at a Hilltop intersection early on Sunday
morning, he likely figured she’d say nothing.

None of the others that police say were raped by Smith had reported it, silenced by a
combination of fear, shame and self-blame. Koval shouldn’t have been much different.

After all, Smith later told Columbus police, he’d done much worse to at least a half-dozen other
women.

Koval almost did stay quiet. The 21-year-old didn’t want to tell anyone what had happened, didn’t
want to deal with an invasive exam, the questions or the accusations.

She’d gone to Smith’s Northeast Side apartment willingly, after meeting him on an online-dating
website a week earlier and spending a few hours hanging with him and her friends. He seemed normal
and friendly.

They were supposed to just watch a movie. Instead, she said, he raped her and took her
virginity.

“I knew I shouldn’t have went,” she said yesterday. “I know I’m smarter than that.”

It was pressure from Koval’s 11-year-old sister that persuaded her to go to the emergency room,
and later police.

“What if he did it to one of your sisters?” the girl asked. “What if it happened to one of
us?"

So Koval went to the hospital on Sunday evening, sparking the investigation and leading to the
arrest of the 25-year-old Smith. When SWAT officers arrived at Smith’s apartment at 5005 Clancy
Court on Monday, they saw him leaving with another woman.

After Smith was in custody, the 25-year-old woman who had been with him told police that she,
too, had been raped.

TheDispatch does not typically name victims of sexual assault, but Koval agreed to tell her
story and be named.

Smith is charged with two counts each of rape and kidnapping in connection with the assaults on
Koval and the woman he was with on Monday. He is being held in the Franklin County jail on $1.5
million bond.

Police are asking other women to come forward, after Smith gave the names of six others in
central Ohio he says he raped, said Sgt. Terry McConnell, of the Columbus police sexual-assault
unit. Detectives can be reached at 614-645-4701.

In some of the cases, the women agreed to consensual sex and went to Smith’s house
voluntarily.

“But once they’d got to the house, he’d take it above what was agreed upon,” McConnell said. The
detective said Smith would force the women into sex acts they didn’t want to do.

Smith seemed to expect his arrest, telling detectives he’d been doing this for a while.

“He said he was really surprised the other girls hadn’t come forward,” McConnell said. Smith
told investigators there were other assaults “more serious than this.”

One of those other women was Brittany Duckery, 21. Like Koval, she met Smith on POF.com, the
Plenty of Fish dating website. They went on two dates back in February and had consensual sex
once.

But he made her uneasy and she decided that she didn’t want to see him anymore. But Duckery had
left her eyeglasses at his place and he wouldn’t bring them to her. So she went to his apartment to
retrieve them.

That’s when he forced himself on her and raped her, she said. She didn’t report it.

“I felt like I put myself in that situation, where it shouldn’t have happened in the first
place,” she said.

But that wasn’t her last contact with Smith, said Duckery, who also agreed to be identified.

She called 911 on July 23, after Smith texted her and demanded she come see him, or he’d shoot
himself. Officers went to his house to check on him and found nothing wrong.

Columbus police records show he threatened another woman in the same way a month earlier.

Duckery didn’t know about the other victims, but she’s not surprised. When he texted her after
the assault, she told him he needed help. She said he explained the rape as a “fetish.”

“He’s not aware of what he’s doing is wrong,” she said. “He just thinks it’s something he likes
to do — like role playing or something. He needs to know the difference between what he does and
what he supposedly likes that doesn’t involve rape.”

Duckery’s decision not to call police over the rape isn’t rare; only 40 percent of rapes are
reported, according to the National Crime Victimization Survey.

When victims go with their attacker willingly, or even agree to have sex, there can be a sense
of guilt, or a fear that nobody will believe them, said Susan Wismar, prevention-education
coordinator at the Sexual Assault Response Network of Central Ohio.

“That’s why a lot of survivors don’t come forward,” she said. “They don’t want people to say
they brought it on themselves.”

Victims have been “brainwashed,” Wismar said, into thinking that if they said yes to kissing or
intercourse, they have to do other things that the partner wants.

On his Plenty of Fish profile, Smith says he’s a “guitar-playing, horror-movie-loving,
heavy-metal madman with a bit of old-fashioned country boy thrown in for good measure looking for a
like-minded female to be my best friend maybe more.”

On the website, he describes his ideal first date as, “Maybe a concert if someone decent is
playing, if not maybe cook her dinner and cuddle up watching some horror movies.”

Since Sunday, Koval has been living her own horror story.

She can’t sleep, imagining Smith trying to get into her mom’s house, where she’s staying. She
found out yesterday that he’d been arrested, and said maybe she’ll sleep easier now.

But mostly, she can’t believe she’s the only woman who came forward.

If you or someone you know has been a victim of sexual assault, help is available through the
Sexual Assault Response Network of Central Ohio’s 24-hour Rape Helpline at 614-267-7020.